In today's office environment, it is common for a person to rely on a combination of communication devices for his or her multi-media communication needs. For example, a person may utilize an e-mail system, a desk top telephone, a voice mail system, a mobile telephone, a cellular telephone, a fax machine, a wireless pager, and a building wide or campus wide loud speaker paging system (either overhead loud speakers or through the loud speaker in each desk top telephone), and an e-mail system.
Each of the above listed systems is tailored to provide a convenient system for providing certain types of communications but is unsuited for other types of communications. For example, the e-mail system and the fax machine are convenient for written communication but are unsuited for a real time voice conversation. The desk top telephone is well suited for providing a high quality of service voice conversation but is unsuited for providing voice conversation when the user is not at his or her desk. On the other hand, a mobile telephone or cellular telephone is well suited for providing voice conversation to a mobile user, but the quality of service is typically not as high as the quality of service of the desk top telephone.
E-mail and voice mail are both well suited for delivery of private text and audio messages respectively, but are unsuited for real time delivery of such messages because both require the person to access such systems to retrieve their messages. On the other hand, a wireless pager is a convenient system for real time delivery of private text messages to a mobile user, but is unsuited for delivery of voice messages and the loud speaker paging system is well suited for real time delivery of voice messages across an entire building or campus, but is unsuited for delivery of private or personal messages to a smaller or otherwise controlled group of recipients.
What is needed is a multi media communication management system that provides for real time delivery of private audio messages to mobile users and that does not suffer the disadvantages of the existing communication systems.